The Guide For Cordless Tools Battery: Which Type is Best?
When it is time to buy a new cordless tool, you have a lot of specifications, look at it. Whether it’s a cordless lawn mower, an electric drill or anything you want, a part of the tool is the battery. This is probably the most puzzling norm. When you shop, too many numbers, types and ratings are thrown on you. You will ultimately rely on shop salesmen’s advice.
Well let’s give you a bit of an education and go over the different battery types, ratings and everything else you need to know regarding batteries for cordless tools.
How Battery Technology Has Improved
Battery technology has improved vastly over the past decade, and in some cases the tools that they power can perform just as well as a corded tool.
One of the main problems with batteries in the past was their ability to last the distance. There is nothing more annoying than having your battery run out of juice half way through a job. Modern day Li-Ion batteries can provide power for extended periods of time, and also recharge quite quickly – making them a worthwhile invesment.
If you told a carpenter that you relied on nothing but a MAKITA 9122 Power Tool Battery drill to do all your screwing and drilling jobs 15 years ago they would have laughed at you, these days cordless drills, nailguns and other such cordless tools are their most used devices.
Which Battery Type is the Best for Cordless Tools?
The cordless tool industry has grown exponentially since the release of the Li-ion battery because of the vast improvement over the other older battery types.
So yes, I know that some of the other battery types listed in this article are outdated, but they do still have their uses and they are still sold with some cordless tools.
So if you want the quick answer as to which battery type is best, then you will probably want to go with a Li-ion battery.
Of course there are many other things to consider, so if you want to learn a bit more then please keep reading.
Understanding Battery Capacity & Specifications
When you are shopping for a cordless tool, you will notice that you are bombarded with different battery specifications.
The most common specifications that are all over the packaging and marketing materials are voltage (V) and amp-hours (Ah). Well surely it is easy right? Just choose the biggest numbers and you have the best battery? While this seems like the obvious answer, it does depend on numerous factors which we will look at.
Let’s quickly explain some of the most commonly used terms when it comes to cordless tool batteries.
Ampere-Hour (Ah)
Ah, or ampere-hour is the total amount of charge your battery can deliver in one hour. E.g. Under ideal conditions, a cordless lawn mower that continuously draws 2.0 amperes (amps) of current will drain the total charge of a 2.0Ah battery in 1 hour.
So by that logic, a 4.0Ah battery should last for 2 hours in the same electric mower. This is all assuming of course that the mower draws a constant 2.0A and that conditions are ideal for the battery – which never happens in the real world.
There is another thing to consider here, and that is the fact that a 4.0Ah battery is not necessarily going to last twice as long as a 2.0Ah battery will, in some circumstances it may actually last more than twice as long. It all depends on the type of battery, how it is wired up and the control circuitry in the battery itself.
But you can still use the basic reasoning mentioned here to roughly judge how long a battery might last.
So to put it simple Ah is a measure of how much charge the battery can provide. A simple analogy would be the size of the fuel tank in a car.
Battery Voltage
The voltage (V) rating of a battery is a measurement of how much power that battery can provide. In very simple terms, the higher the voltage the more powerful the battery. Some cordless devices require more power to run, so a cordless drill that is designed to drill through tough timber is going to need more power than a drill that is only designed to do light work.
Yes, higher voltage generally means the tool is more powerful – but it also means more weight in the tool and usually it will cost you more as well. It all comes down to choosing the right tool for the job, remember that bigger is not always better.
Memory Effect
They memory effect occurs when a battery is constantly partly drained, then charged without being allowed to fully discharge. The name comes from the fact that the battery remembers how much of its charge was drained before being charged and then uses the shorter charge period as its new capacity.
Not all batteries suffer from the memory effect.
Battery Cycle Life
Cycle life is a measurement of how many times a battery can be charged before losing the ability to retain energy. For example, Li-Ion batteries in cordless tools generally have a cycle life of 300-500. So theoretically you could charge a Li-Ion battery at least 300 times before it would need to be replaced.
Self-discharge
After a MAKITA 192681-5 Cordless Tool Battery has been charged, if the battery is not used straight away then it starts to slowly lose its charge. Some battery technologies have a much faster self-discharge rate than others. Keep in mind that a faster self-discharge rate is not always bad – if your tools are never stored away for long periods between use then you probably won’t care about the self-discharge rate at all. Self-discharge is measured in percentage of charge lost per month.
Deep-discharge
A deep discharge is allowing the battery to completely drain of energy through use. This can be problematic for some battery types (not all) and can severely reduce the batteries cycle life and capacity.
On the flip side, there are some battery types that should periodically be allowed to deep discharge in order to maintain a healthy battery.
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